One of the advantages of a complete image backup (using Ghost or Acronic True Image or others) is that you can keep a weekly image backup on your external hard drive. I keep 3 generations on my external usb2 hard drive, but you can easily keep more, or periodically burn the backup image files to double layer dvds. That way, you can restore your entire image if your system gets corrupted by some hardware change.
This thread is for Ghost, but what is a sample of one of the BSOD stop codes? That should give you a clue as to your hardware or software/driver issue. And what brand/model laptop are you talking about? Some are better than others.
Finally, be cautios about what software you allow on the pc. I have a business laptop that I carefully control, and rarely have any issue with, but then I have a minimum set of business software installed.
